l f. ..' ' ';i ,'''' . .", .; '. I ' I, " ' . "".' r " " ÞI ,: ' .. ,'/ F RANK HEDLEY" president and general manager of t hat evefl-present evil, the Interbor- ough Rapid Transit Company, c a use s despair in the hearts of those among his associates who be- lieve in that modern traction -corpora tion slogan, "The Pub- lic Be Kidded." "The much talked of patience and . good nature of the New Yorker," he remarked on one occasion as letters of complaint piled up on his desk, "is good to read about, but I have failed d . f . " to Iscover any 0 It.. Similarly, when an investigator re- ported that congestion on the subway was due to the stupidity of a public which declined to ride in the end cars, he became heavily sarcastic. "The public to blame!" he snorted. "The public is never to blame. You take it from me, the railroads are to blame for everything." Diplomacy is, in brie f, not in the man. The average politician believes that a lengthy investigation can solve any problem and therefore creates boards and commissions to remedy the transit tangle by the question-and- answer method. Hedley, who is cer- tain that only higher fare and more trains will do the job, resents the fre- quency with which he is subpoenaed to make an officeholder's holiday. He becomes a cocky, facetious, irritating witness who refuses to hide his emo- tIons. "I will study the situation," he said during one of these inquisitions, "and then do as I please." Another time, on a cold December day, he was summoned to the cham- bers of the Public Service Commis- sion and asked for an explanation of why the cars in the subway were not properly heated. Had enough heat been turned on? Hedley, taking the stand, gazed across the room in which the hearing was being conducted and shivered in an exaggerated manner. "Are you cold, Mr. Hedley?" asked one of the commissioners. "If I kept my cars as cold as this room," he replied brightly, "you'd have me up here in a jiffy." All these traits, admirable even if iii .;r, ..: t,' .. " ",' .,.,.' : . ; . , r.. 1 - , I.?I >: J . ',' ,r,': ,... ",,, t..." ..r : . , " :,:.t . . ><. :;> . ,.V"'., . -, , - ',' -. ' ' ." " -i \ PROFILES .' r x x , ;. x x x x , .k: WHEELS IN HIS HEAD Frank Hedley r " . ,::: : -' .. f. \. '-: , " l' { . . þf/yr.!.j- "',. , f .' .111: , </" : , i, " . . 'I .,' \ ,?, . , r' .. r " ... .,:. :" J .:,;{ . '" i... ;... .. ',." .,:.; "', ":, :.< ,',' I . ',.,' .I + ...., :'; /i :1 , J" ,-to :" .j, , . ) . "' .'. ; ,," , , , ::: ,,',' . J." " "',: ' , . --ill ..... ' Þ4VG.O/ "LE I . . \: ;; j: )h .' ... . . annoying, are natural to a man whose life has been spent doing, with familiar precision, things that most men know nothing of. I have never heard of a locomotive engineer, the master of an ocean liner, an aviator or even a taxi- cab chauffeur who suffered from an - inferiority complex. These men be- long to what William McFee called the "race apart." They look down from on high upon lesser men who ride on their trains and their ships. Frank Hedley, for all his title of president and general manager, and his salary of seventy-five thousand dollars a year, finds his chief satisfaction in being the man who runs the trains. "Any fool," he told an intimate some years ago, "could be the president of a railroad company. But the gen- eral manager has to know something." T HERE are many corporation presidents who would envy him. The excitðments of Hedley's life do not consist 0 f bond issues, mergers, sinking funds, interest rates and Equipment Trust six per cent Gold Certificates, Series A. These matter he leaves, in large measure, to James L. Quackenbush, the I.R.T.'s ahl . . general counsel and real administrative head. Hedley, as much by choice as through inability to solve financial puzzles, is content to be the operating genius of the I.R.T. Each morning he finds on his desk detailed reports of the delays a1!d minor accidents of the day before. Hedley is versed in such mysteries as car-miles, power consump- tion, and peak loads. Like a fireman, he is likely to be called from his home in Yonkers at any hour of the night to go to the scene of some accident. He has given strict orders that he is to be summoned for any unusual event. A few months ago, when two subway stations were bombed, he was filled with wrath, because he first heard of it from his morning paper. Some one at the I.R. T. offices had forgotten to tel- ephone. When there is a strike, Hedley re- mains on duty until far into the night. He personally supervises the hiring of strike-breakers. He rushes out to the yards to watch new men being trained, often assists in giving lessons, and as- sures the recruits that they will be pro- tected from violence. Heavy snow- falls ar.e not the menace to transporta- tIon in New York they once were, due partly to the miles of subways that are not affected and partly to a device in- vented by Hedley which scrapes snow and ice from the third rails. But when there is an unusually bad storm Hedley is on the job. In the days when he was in charge of several sur- face lines, not infrequently he rode the plows with his men and gloried in the physical battle against the storm. Today the process of digging out can be supervised from a desk-and he re- grets it. F or years Hedley was be- yond question the most expert rapid- transit man in the United States. Lately, however, President William S. Menden of the B.-M. T. has de- veloped rapidly and now rates as his equal, 'at least. H EDLEY learned at an early age to work with his hands: hands that had inherited the skill of a long line of railroad men. He was twenty years old when he gathered his ma- chinist's tools into his kit, left his home